Putting the ‘AI’ in Sustainability with Avalara

AI is one of the hottest topics within SAP and all of tech in 2025. Under every use case and scenario for AI usage, there is one key underpinning factor – data. Companies must ensure that they train AI on accurate and high-quality data to ensure that they receive meaningful outputs. AI use cases that span multiple companies also require certainty that the data is truthful and standardized.

While AI is focused on radically increasing the economic efficiency of companies and value chains, its requirements for data lay the foundation for the global community to finally tackle sustainability in a way that drives results, not just reporting.

Understanding AI and Sustainability

To help companies better understand how their data can be used to expand AI use cases up and down their value chain while also bolstering global sustainability efforts, Avalara funded Oxford University’s Commission on Sustainability Data.

The foundation of the research is focused on enabling businesses around the world to store their operational data in a standardized format that can be proven to be both complete, accurate and unaltered. “We are enabling companies to create a dataset, that they have complete control over, but they are still able to prove it is complete, accurate and unaltered from the source systems. What we are most excited about is the method’s ability to scale to 10’s of millions of companies” said Anders Knox, Strategic Partner Director for SAP at Avalara.

The key to allowing a company to have both complete control of their data and choose the data storage vendor of their choice while still maintaining the ability to prove their dataset is complete, accurate and unaltered comes down to operational data’s ability to be both standardized and intertwined. in what Avalara and Oxford University call a “self-auditing dataset.”

But what does this have to do with sustainability? When countries or other entities are pushing for carbon data, a standardized, self-auditing data set can enable algorithms to score the company for accuracy, auditability and actual carbon calculations before allowing them into the market.

Ensuring that all data is standardized and accurate allows companies around the world to empower AI to improve economic efficiency, safeguards the integrity of sustainability initiatives and keeps detailed corporate data safe and protected.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Data quality powers everything. The old adage “garbage in, garbage out” is becoming even more important in the age of AI. Companies must train AI models on accurate information to achieve the results that they want. Inaccuracies or redundancies can negatively impact training and set back AI initiatives significantly.

Sustainability cannot be an afterthought. AI will make Sustainability very real, very quickly. Initiatives are growing more important each year. Companies should adopt systems that will enable them to compete in a world where sustainability issues move from reporting to action. This can help bolster job satisfaction among employees and demonstrate to the world what a company’s values are.

Efficiency and sustainability go hand-in-hand. Many of the same practices that enhance efficiency can also be used to ensure sustainability. Leveraging AI, ensuring data accuracy, and optimizing processes can go a long way to ensuring companies are not producing waste or wasting time on outdated processes and unnecessary actions.